


(Not) A Happy Story

by Pixiestick_cc



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:10:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5042446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixiestick_cc/pseuds/Pixiestick_cc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How bitterly cruel that with all the evils in her world, ones that could strike you down with a single blink, Beatrice had succumbed to something not coated in darkness, but as simple as a cough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whiggity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whiggity/gifts).



> Not canon with the IYLPP universe, just an AU version of it to show Whiggity I am capable of writing angst.

Wirt sat in a chair across the bedroom, breathing in the lilacs and roses perfuming the airput there to cover the smell of death. His eyes were wandering, trying to avoid staring at the private moment between mother and daughter saying their last goodbyes. He desperately didn’t want to be there. It felt intrusive. But Beatrice had requested Wirt stay, and he’d had to witness each member of her large family come in for their final farewell. Her mother was the last of them, and next would be him. Wirt was honoring Beatrice’s wish that he be the only one present when she passed.

How bitterly cruel that with all the evils in her worldones that could strike you down with a single blinkBeatrice had succumbed to something not coated in darkness, but as simple as a cough. A cough that had built upon itself until it left her broken. He huffed an angry sigh into the room at the thought, but made sure to push down his anger. It wasn’t the right emotion to be feeling at that moment.

When Beatrice’s mother finished her goodbye, she made her way towards the door, but paused while reaching for the handle. Turning her head, she swept her son-in-law a sympathetic glance, and covering her mouth to stifle her cry, she left. Then Wirt heard Beatrice say his name. He swung his gaze in her direction. “Yes?”

“Get over here, dummy,” she insulted, but in her weak state it had less bite than it used to. He tried not to show how much it hurt him that her fire inside had diminished into only a few glowing embers, but a soft sob escaped his mouth. Beatrice responded as if there was no reason for him to be so dramatic and rolled her eyes. “Don’t start yet. I’ve still got some time left.”

He nodded and sat down on the bed that had been her home for the last few days. No longer able to sit or stand, Beatrice was now bedridden while waiting for the slow creep of death. “Put your arms around me,” she told him, and holding back tears he positioned himself beside her. Slipping one arm under her body, and the other over the top so that his hands met at her side, he pulled his wife in closely. She let out a contented sigh and was quiet for a few minutes afterwardtoo long for Wirt. When it came to Beatrice, quiet didn’t bring about peaceful thoughts. It meant possible death. Attempting to hide the panic he felt, Wirt broke through the thick silence that saturated the room and said her name.

He must have failed though, because her reply sounded annoyed. “Stop being like that.” She exhaled loudlya mad sound that picked up in pitch near the end as it became a soft whimper. “I don’t want to feel sad,” Beatrice explained, “and when you fall apart it’s so hard for me to keep it together. I can’t be the stronger one this time. _You_ have to be strong for me. Don’t make the little time we have left together sad. I want to be happy.”

Wirt gulped, preventing another sob from breaking free. “S-sorry,” he finally said, wiping the hot tears spilling from his eyes, on the fabric of her sleeve. “But without you, I can’t … I can’t-“

“Stop it, Wirt,” she interrupted, grumpy again. “Just … recite me some poetry. Remember when you used to do that? You never do it anymore.”

“I do, but I don’t let you hear what my brain comes up with. It’s all so dark now,” Wirt admitted.

“Well, you always did have a weird fascination with melancholy. _That’s_ not new.” Beatrice let out a weak scoff.

Wirt gave her one long agonizing look. “I-I don’t think it’s the same. You wouldn’t want to hear it.”

“Then recite me something happy. Something old.”

His tears were flowing faster now; Wirt was unwilling to hold them back anymore and the dam that had been weakening, broke completely. The struggle was too great for him to keep it together. “I can’t,” he wept against the skin of her neck.

“Oh, for crying out loud,” Beatrice sighed, but like Wirt, she wasn’t able to hold onto the brave front she put forth either, and began to cry along with him.  

Wirt was aware as he held her in his arms, with tears streaming down both their faces, that with each word they spoke, she was fading further away from him. For a long time after returning from The Unknown, he assumed Beatrice’s world was some land of the dead. But how could that be when she was dying right in front of him? You couldn’t die twice. There would be no second wall to climb over for him to find her again. This was the end of what they had together. Once she was gone, he’d go back to being just Wirt.

That was when he summoned the courage to move past his fear of saying goodbye. If Beatrice wanted to hear something happy, he’d find it in himself to do what she wanted in the time remaining. But Wirt’s determination fell into despondency when he found his mind too muddled with sadness, and was unable to come up with a poem to invoke happiness. “How about a story instead?” he suggested, after digger deeper and finding a solution.

“A story?” Beatrice’s voice was just short of incredulous, only she couldn’t quite gather the strength to convey it.

“Yeah, I-I can do that. That is, unless you want to hear me recite Robert Frost for the hundredth time.” Wirt somehow found the ability to joke, and the effort he put forth to dig up that old part of himself buried underneath all his grief was worth it. The smile it provoked on her pale lips meant the world to him.

“No one wants to hear that,” she chuckled, but her humor soon devolved into coughing, forcing Wirt to delay his story.

In the meantime, he stroked Beatrice’s once radiant red curlsnow limp and lifelessaway from her face. Looking at her scrunched up features as she grimaced with each cough, he marveled at how beautiful she still was. Despite everything Beatrice had been through while her sickness tightened its grip during the past year, she was still the woman he lovedglowing, with fire running through her veins, and a sharp tongue to prove it.

When Beatrice finally found calm again, Wirt brushed his fingers across her freckled cheek and began his tale. “Once there was an angry bluebird.”

“I hate this story already,” she grumbled, but he ignored her complaint.

“She wasn’t actually a bluebird, but a girl who sometimes had trouble controlling her temper.” Beatrice made a soft disgruntled sound. “She was angry because she didn’t know her own self-worth. She didn’t think she was capable of anything great. But then she met a boy, who was also angry-“

“Why is it always the boy who gets to come in and save the girl in these stories? So trite,” Beatrice sighed.

“Will you just let me get through this, okay?” he hadn’t meant to sound so pathetically pleading, but as things were with him lately, he never managed to sound any other way.

Beatrice grimaced an apology and nodded. “Okay, tell me about this boy. Did he wear a dumb cone shaped hat?”

“No, but he wore a lot of bitterness in his heart. He and this girl were completely opposite and yet, somehow similar. But neither could meet their potential without the other. She showed him courage. He showed her kindness. And somehow they made a magnificent pair.”

“You can’t leave Greg out of this story. He played a very important part,” Beatrice interrupted, causing Wirt to raise an eyebrow.

“I never said who this girl and boy were. They weren’t given names,” he teased, and saw another smile flicker briefly on her lips. Wirt sniffed and cleared his throat, before continuing. “There was also another boy, whose plight brought them together. He was brave, always cheerful, showing others what they should aim to be. Together the girl and boy worked to free this other boy from his dilemma, and through it they saw the good in each other. Not long after, the boy and girl fell in love, and their opposites complimented each other’s in a short, but strong marriage.” Wirt stopped talking, trying to keep from falling to pieces. She wanted a happy story. Happy. But he couldn’t stop himself. “And now the boy will never be complete again without her.” He ended his tale with a tortured moan, one that Beatrice didn’t take kindly to.

“Damn it, Wirt …” she pulled in a deep breath shuddering breath and released it as a cry. “That story didn’t end happy. I don’t want to leave here thinking you won’t be able to go on after I’m gone.”

“I can’tI don’t know how to live without you. I want to stay here. I don’t want to go back over the wall. I need to be here with you,” he wept into her neck, making guttural echoes of his misery.

In any other circumstance, Beatrice would have called him out for being over the top. But not this time. Her looming death received the full spectrum of his sadness, and she accepted it. And somehow his wife found the ability to calm him, even in her current state of decline. “You have to. Greg needs you. Your family needs you. There is no reason for you to stay here after I’m gone. Our story will be complete.” With all the strength she had left, Beatrice moved her body, so that she was looking at Wirt directly. “I want you to tell me that story again, but with a better ending,” she rasped, like her little bit of moving had winded her.

“I can’t,” Wirt whispered, his lack of volume made up for by the distress he intoned.

“Do it!” she ordered, no longer soft, but severe, displaying the last bit of fire she possessed.

Wirt buried his face in her chest and cried for a moment more, attempting to look past the grave image of his life without her, to do what she wanted. He gazed up again when Beatrice breathed his name. “Please do it, before I go.” Her eyes were imploring, and Wirt coughed away the last bit of anguish choking him.

He repeated his story as best he could and then hesitated after his voice wavered near the end. His sadness wanted to repeat the same miserable conclusion to their tale, but he took courage from the faraway look in her eyes. She was slipping, but still holding on, waiting for him to give her the right ending. “And though he couldn't imagine his life without this girl, the boynow a manmade his way back to the life he’d known before. But he wouldn’t live it as he once had, for she had shown him a better way to be and even without ..." His voice faltered again, but Wirt paused only for a second, not wanting to waste any more time. “Without her, he was able to live a full life using her memory to guide him forward.”

She was gone not long after his last word. He knew it, but didn’t move. Still holding her tightly in his arms, he wanted to preserve their last moment. And then in the trees outside, Wirt thought he heard birds chirpinga cheerful sound that grated against his sorrow. But, as he began to sob again, holding his dead wife, he imagined that the birds were saying goodbye and celebrating her life. Beatrice had always had a rapport with them, even after she’d been transformed back into a human. They had sensed her death, and suddenly the chirps were no longer insufferable him, but instead a lifeline.

Just as the birds were doing, Wirt would say goodbye, but always celebrate who she was (and would continue to be) to him.


	2. Chapter 2

After the funeralwhich was small per Beatrice’s requestWirt stayed around for a week. He felt too paralyzed by emotional pain, and locked himself away with her things to grieve. It was a weird bargaining phase for him, where he perused her magic books, and deluded himself with the dark idea of necromancy. If he used dark magic for love then it would make it light in the endor so his depressed mind concluded. But none of her books held anything other than memories of spells gone awry or ones that had worked and provided them with something they needed. Something except a cure.

Time slowed during that week, and her absence created a chasm between Wirt and reality. Nothing seemed real. It was a fevered dream that finally broke one morning with acceptance. She was dead and he had to move on.

But going back over the wall held its own challenges, with her memory still imbued in his world. She was everywhere he looked, in the simplest of things. And after one too many breakdowns over some rediscovered memory he’d forgotten due to its insignificance, Wirt shut down. As a result, he began to exist in a state of just being and not living. And most significantly, not fulfilling the promise he made while she was dying. He wasn’t living a full life with her memory guiding him. He wasn't living at all.

After that, Wirt lost the ability to feel, to write, to express who he was. He was nothing; a shell of his former self. It had always been his poetry and Beatrice that were the combining force pushing him forward. Without her, the poetry couldn’t existnot even in a devastating anguished form. There was nothing in his head. He’d been shattered beyond repair, and in the wake of devastation there had been only apathy to greet him. It was who he was nownothing, locked away from the world in his room.

For months he stayed that way, until one day Greg shuffled up to his closed door and said his older brother’s name. Wirt heard Greg approaching before his voice, but didn’t respond. There wasn’t any reason to. His brother would come in regardless. This was the recurring pattern between them. Nearly everyday, Greg took it upon himself to try and pull Wirt from his room. His mom stayed away now, saying it was too painful for her to see her son so broken. But the always persistent Greg kept trying, because he was Gregthe fifteen year old who hadn’t yet lost his optimistic outlook on life. He saw the light at the end of the tunnel even for someone like Wirt. Especially for someone like Wirt.

Like clockwork, when Wirt remained silent after hearing his name, Greg pulled open the door and stepped inside. One day he would have to install a lock on that doorthat was, if he ever felt the pull of a desire to do anything other than sit in a chair by his bedroom window and stare out. Wirt turned his head to look at his brother after he came to stand beside him. “Just wanted to let you know what today isyou knowin case you forgot.”

All days bled together now. The only way Wirt could tell any passage of time occurred was when the scenery changed from his position at the window. The world altered, but he remained the same. From the reds, yellows, and oranges of the leaves in the trees and bushes, combined with the autumn decor on lawns, he assumed it was fall. It made sense. Beatrice had died when spring was at its peakflowers blooming and birds chirping. He sighed heavily at the memory of the birdssomething Wirt remembered for the cruel contrast it made with her death. It must be Halloween. It was the only option that made sense.

Greg misinterpreted his brother’s exhale as him expressing confusion. “It’s okay if you don’t know,” he tried to reassure. Wirt bristled at the demeaning quality of Greg’s response, like he was some headcase that would crack if not handled with a gentle touch.

No matter how Wirt heard the response in his head, deep down he didn’t think his brother had the ability to be patronizing. Greg was genuine in everything. But Wirt was always on the defensive now. After his family and friends had staged an intervention telling him he should seek therapy, Wirt was now conditioned to assume ulterior motives. “I know it’s Halloween,” he said defiantly as if he actually knew.

“Oh, good, then I just wanted to invite you to a haunted house the high school is putting on. It’s the kind where you walk through and there’s a different scene acted out. I get to play a zombie. It’s not much work, grunting and pretending to eat Kellyshe’s my friend, you know, she’s playing the girl I attackbut I have fun. Maybe you will too.”

Wirt slowly raised and lowered his shoulders, performing a half-hearted shrugas if doing anything more would be too great of an effort. “Halloween isn’t actually a time I want to be out for obvious reasons,” he muttered, staring back through the window pane.

“Why not? I’ll let you behind the scenes. You can meet some of my friends from the theater department,” Greg persisted.

Wirt scoffed and shook his head, before turning back to his brother. “Because it’s my wedding anniversary. It’s also the anniversary of when wewhen all that stuff happened to us seven years ago. None of those memories are going to make me feel good, Greg. Did you even think of that?”

A pained look passed over Greg’s face, but he recovered quickly. “Well, at least you would feeling something. Is this what you want to do foreverstay up here ignoring the rest of us, like we don’t matter?”

Coming from another person the words might have sounded antagonistic, but from Greg, they only held concern. He wasn’t baiting Wirt into a fight. He wanted to know when he would have his brother back. Unfortunately Wirt wasn’t able to acknowledge this and treated Greg’s question as a threat. “Don’t make this about you,” he warned.

Wirt heard Greg sigh and for a few seconds an uneasy silence blanketed the room. “But it is about me, and mom, and dad, and even Sara.” His brother sounded sad, and a sliver of emotion worked its way through Wirt’s heart. He may not have felt for himself, but the pain his emotionless state caused othersespecially Gregdid manage to worm guilt out of him. “You don’t think any of us miss Beatrice too? We all miss her. But shutting yourself out isn’t going to bring her back.”

“Stop it. I don’t want to talk about … her.” He couldn’t even say Beatrice’s name. It held too much sadness, too many negative emotions Wirt didn’t want to feel.

Another quiet spread between them as Wirt turned to gaze out the window again, hoping his brother would leave. He stared at some fallen leaves as they were picked up by a breeze and moved from one yard to another. The yellow and red danced around a scarecrow decoration before moving out of sight. Why wasn’t Greg leaving? Wirt didn’t want to think about what today was or how he was hurting his family. He wanted to go back to not existing.

“I just want you to know that I miss you, and I miss her. But at least you’re still here. I just wish that it felt like it,” Greg calmly said, finally breaking through the tense moment between them. “Here,” he then added, and Wirt heard something hit his bed with a soft thump. “I bought this last month for your birthday, but didn’t think you'd take it. You probably won’t now, but I have to stop holding back just cause I’m afraid of what you’ll do.”

Greg began to walk away, and Wirt felt compelled to look at the gift resting on his bedspread. It was a leather bound book with a blank cover. But after hearing the creak of the door’s hinges, Wirt's gaze trailed away from the book, over to Greg. His breath caught in his throat as he took in the dejected slump of his brother’s shoulders. He had done that. “Greg,” Wirt called out, wanting to follow up with so much more, but unable to push out anything other than, “I’m sorry.”

Greg turned around and acknowledged his brother’s apology with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “If you change your mind about the haunted house,” he raised his arms out in front of him and made some gruff grunting noises Wirt assumed were his brother's version of a zombie, “I’ll be there from 6-9. Mention my name. They’ll let you come through the back way. I told them already that you might come.” 

There was a bit of playfulness in Greg's zombie acting that reminded Wirt of the youthful joy his brother had always exhibited growing up, and for the first time in a long time he chuckled. It was a foreign noise, like he couldn’t remember what amusement should sound like. But it wasn't strange to Greg. Another smile began to form on his mouth, but unlike the first, this one managed to light up the hazel of his irises. He then left the room with a little skip in his step.

As he listened to his brother’s footsteps recede into the background, Wirt moved from his chair to the bed. There he satthe mattress groaning under his weightand flipped the book over in his hands. He began thumbing through the pages, finding each one blank except for the first, where a message from his brother was written.

_For when you feel like writing again. Tell your story– Love, Greg._

It was such a simple sentence, but it brought back a flood of memories of when he’d first come home and sought out Greg. Wirt had cried on his shoulder, telling him all about Beatrice’s death and of the story he promised herthe one he was not currently living. “Maybe someday you’ll feel like writing again and you can tell your story. Write about how we met Beatrice and all the stuff that came after," Greg had comforted. That had been months ago, before Wirt had shut down. He’d forgotten, but Greg hadn’t. 

Without putting much thought into what he was doing, Wirt sprang from the bed, following the sudden urge Greg's gift had provoked. He yanked the chair that hadn’t moved from the window in months, over to his writing desk. In a frenzied state, Wirt pulled open its drawers in search of a pen, which he eventually found underneath loose papers of unedited poems he’d abandoned long ago. He didn’t realize he was crying until the paper of Greg’s book became dotted with tears. Wirt was feeling emotions againa strong surge all at once.  It was alarming, but also exhilarating. His heart was opening up to pain, but also love. The two sensations mixed together, pouring out of him as he gripped the pen in his shaking hand and pushed it against the paper.  Inside were Greg's words to Wirt and next to them he scribbled down the beginning of the story he’d started months before when Beatrice was dying in his arms.

_Once there was an angry bluebird_


End file.
